In Uttarakhand’s hill villages, farmers say wild boars and monkeys are repeatedly destroying crops, forcing many to leave fields barren.
The state’s Migration Prevention Commission has identified crop damage by wild animals as one of the reasons behind rural migration.
A 2026 commission report says the area under kharif crops declined by 13% and rabi crops by 15% between 2016-17 and 2021-22.
In the Terai, elephants and nilgai are causing large-scale crop losses, while predators such as tigers, leopards and wolves are affecting livestock rearers.
Farmers say crop insurance and compensation remain difficult to access, especially when land is cultivated informally or without written agreements.
Despite spending on fencing, compensation and monkey sterilisation, Uttarakhand lacks consolidated data on how many farmers have benefited or how much crop damage has reduced.
Ganesh Singh Garib still has around 0.4 hectares of land in one single patch, together. This is an extraordinary thing for the mountains. Singh, who once ran a radio shop in Delhi, didn’t like the idea of migration very much, returned to his village in Uttarakhand at the age of 40. He started farming through voluntary land consolidation turned the barren land, green and flourishing but soon animals devastated the fields. Today the fields are barren again, the terror of animals snatched away farming and brought people back to the same point from where they started.
Similarly, Sudhir Sundariyal, who left his job at a media company in Noida in 2014 and returned to his village in Uttarakhand, says that there are 60 village assemblies in his Pokhra block where around 95 per cent of farming has become barren. The major reason for leaving farming is wild animals. Boars devastate entire fields overnight. He says that he is farming on around 1.6 hectares of land. This land is not only his, but belongs to people of his own village and from other villages too have given him their land for farming, where he does organic farming, however the wild boars often ruin his crops.
In the survey conducted by the Uttarakhand Rural Development and Migration Prevention Commission constituted by the state government to find out the reasons for migration and search for solutions, it also emerged that among the major reasons for leaving farming in rural areas, damage caused by animals is also being counted.
A report released in April 2026 by the Uttarakhand Rural Development and Migration Prevention Commission said that crop damage from wild animals affects farming in the state and people are forced to migrate. In the report, citing the first interim report published in 2018, the commission stated that among the main reasons for migration, damage to farming caused by wild animals stood at fifth place (5.61 per cent). However, Sundariyal says that even after this 2018 report, no efforts were made by the government and the terror of animals is increasing year after year.
The nature of damage caused by wild animals also changes across different geographical regions. In hilly areas, monkeys and wild boars repeatedly cause small-scale damage, whereas in Terai region elephants and nilgai are destroying large quantities of crops. At the same time, predators like tiger, leopard and wolf are causing heavy losses to livestock rearers through attacks on livestock (cow, buffalo and goat). Because these violent animals have become man-eaters, people have stopped farming in remote areas and there is migration in many regions.
In a study associated with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research in 2020, crop damage was recorded in almost all villages of the Lansdowne region of Pauri, where monkeys and wild boars were found to be the major reasons. The study found that crop damage was not limited to one crop or season, but that pressure on agricultural production remains throughout the year.
At the regional level, the Kotdwar range was found to be among the most affected areas. Because of its proximity to forest areas and the large agricultural landscape of the Terai region, attacks on crops were found to be particularly high. These figures show that crop damage in Uttarakhand is not only widespread but is emerging as a region-specific and species-specific crisis.
The Migration Prevention Commission said in its report that between 2016–17 and 2021–22, there has been a 13 per cent decline in the area under kharif crops, while the area under rabi crops declined by 15 per cent during these five years. According to the commission’s report, monkeys and wild boars are mainly responsible for crop damage in the state. This makes it clear that only a few selected species are becoming the major reason for crop damage in the state, due to which agriculture and rural life are seriously being affected.
Farmers bearing the losses are also not being given adequate compensation by the government. Recently, the central government has introduced a new provision under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, according to which from the kharif 2026 season, lakhs of farmers in the state will now be able to claim insurance when crops are destroyed by wild animals. Earlier compensation was available only for hailstorms or drought, but now in case of wild animal attacks, up to 100 per cent of crop value (in proportion to loss) can be covered.
But Sundariyal says that after crop damage, he is unable to avail the benefit of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana because the fields in which he has grown crops are not in his name. People have given them to him on trust, but no written agreement has been made.
People are also not allowed to kill the animals damaging the crops. Sundariyal said, “After continuous efforts, the forest department gave permission to kill wild boars and nilgai. But the rule is that only a hunter can kill these animals. I have contacted some hobby hunters from Dehradun, who will soon come to my place. Now the problem is that the farmer himself will have to arrange for killing the boars.”
According to the rules, boars can only be killed by expert hunters, whose expenses have to be borne by the farmer. For small landholding farmers, this is often not practical.
The government has implemented multi-layered schemes in the state for crop protection from the animals such as solar fencing, bio-fencing and compensation, on which significant expenditure has been done in recent years. Under central and state government schemes, more than 590 million has been spent in the last three years (2023-26) on wildlife-human conflict management in Uttarakhand, while in 2026 alone, 250 million was approved for crop fencing. Apart from this, compensation rates for crop damage have also been fixed, but despite this the biggest problem is that the government does not have any consolidated data to show how much these schemes reduced total crop damage or how many farmers actually benefited.
To deal with the monkey problem in Uttarakhand, the Uttarakhand Forest Department has mainly adopted the “capture-sterilisation-release” model. Under this scheme, monkeys are caught through nets or cages, then taken for sterilisation to centres such as the Chidiyapur Rescue Centre in Haridwar and later released into forests.
Ratan Aswal, coordinator of an organisation working to stop migration in Pauri district, says that there is a lot of manipulation in the state regarding monkey catching. The people who get contracts for catching monkeys catch monkeys from one place and release them in nearby areas, whereas according to rules they should be taken to forest department rescue centres where they should be sterilised.
Ishwar Joshi, coordinator of Lok Prabandh Vikas Sanstha, Almora says that instead of repeatedly catching and sterilising animals, forest areas should be identified and fenced so that wildlife can be restricted within those areas. Compared to the amount currently being spent on catching animals or their sterilisation, this arrangement may prove to be more cost-effective.
This article is part of the series Conflict in the Backyard. A version of it was published in the cover story, Conflict in the Backyard, in the May 16-31, 2026 print issue of Down To Earth.